Met Mighty Mouse and Tim for breakfast, then headed out to hike back up to the PCT.
Idyllwild is a great mountain town with good places to eat and a good outfitter.
But it's still not as high up the mountain as the PCT, so hikers have to take a side trail to get into town, and then back up to the PCT. In my case, I had done a road walk into town because the actual PCT was closed due to a fire a couple years before that had taken out parts of the trail before Idyllwild.
To get back to the PCT there are a couple different trails that lead up from Idyllwild. The Devil's Slide trail is probably the most popular up/down route, and I've hiked it a couple times in the past. We chose to use a different trail that cut off some miles in trade for being steeper.
Tim hiked with us for the start of the trail, but turned back at the permit sign.
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Back up to the PCT from Idyllwild via the Deer Springs trail. Taking a lunch break at Strawberry junction before heading a couple miles further for the day.
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2021 Update:
Met Mighty Mouse and Tim for breakfast, then headed out to hike back up to the PCT.
Idyllwild is a great mountain town with good places to eat and a good outfitter.
But it's still not as high up the mountain as the PCT, so hikers have to take a side trail to get into town, and then back up to the PCT. In my case, I had done a road walk into town because the actual PCT was closed due to a fire a couple years before that had taken out parts of the trail before Idyllwild.
To get back to the PCT there are a couple different trails that lead up from Idyllwild. The Devil's Slide trail is probably the most popular up/down route, and I've hiked it a couple times in the past. We chose to use a different trail that I've also hiked in the past that cut off some miles in trade for being steeper.
Tim hiked with us for the start of the trail, but turned back at the permit sign.
The PCT doesn't go to the summit of Mt. San Jacinto, but a fair number of PCT hikers do take the side trail to the summit. Since Mighty Mouse had gone to the summit on her previous PCT hike, and I had been to the summit a couple times myself, we skipped doing that, and stayed on the PCT as it worked its way around the peak.
We got to encounter our first real patches of snow, and the creek that we filled up on water at was even running under a patch of snow and ice.
We also encountered our first real blow-downs. These are trees that, well, have been blown down, or fallen, across the trail. Over the course of the summer, these typically get cleared out by trail maintenance crews, but this early in the season the trail crews haven't gotten to all of them yet.
Some of the downed trees can be clambered over or under, and some you have to detour around. Not tough when the ground around the trail is flat, but it always seems to be the case that when the trail is on the side of a mountain, often there isn't much possibility of going up or down, as the trail takes that route because higher or lower on the side of the mountain just isn't possible, so some awkward clambering over the fallen tree is needed. And climbing around and over tree trunks is quite challenging with forty or so pounds of backpack strapped to you.
I'll say that long legs come in handy. For almost all of these trees, I had a much easier time than Mighty Mouse.
We ran into Linda, a woman from Sweden who we had met back at Scissors Crossing. She had taken a few days off to go to Coachella, hitching from the Paradise Cafe down to Indio, then back up to the trail after. She's a strong hiker, and we'll likely not see her again, unless she goes for more off-trail adventures.
Linda told us that she took a different route back to the PCT after the fire detour. Her route led up some routes that were completely snow covered and without any other hiker tracks. It sounded like quite an adventure, in a could-have-died sort of way.
There was a couple from Germany camped nearby who were, I think, trying to go without cooking for their food. Hotdog and cheese with catsup in a tortilla for dinner? Hmm. I'll carry the extra weight of a stove.
This was our highest camp site yet, and quite cold. We were also carrying a lot of water, since this site was dry, and we would not cross any water sources until the day after tomorrow.
Photos from today: https://www.b-photo.com/Travel/PCT-2016-Day-by-Day/April/April-20/
Mighty Mouse's blog for today: http://www.timandgerri.com/blog---2016/day-19-20-april-mile-17939-18661-actually-hiked-78-miles
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